Patriot launches Evlvr Thunderbolt 3 SSDs

Storage specialist Patriot has announced its first Thunderbolt 3-connected Non-Volatile Memory Express (NVMe) external solid state drive (SSD), handily promising to beat rival Samsung's pricing but at a considerable cost to performance.

Samsung announced the high-speed Portable SSD X5 late last month, promising a Thunderbolt 3 connection to Non-Volatile Memory Express (NVMe) internals at speeds of up to 2,800MB/s. Now, rival Patriot has fired back with its own equivalent device - and is considerably undercutting Samsung's pricing.

The Patriot Evlvr, the company explains, is powered by a Phison E8 PCI Express (PCIe) controller linked to Non-Volatile Memory Express (NVMe) - a combination which give it a considerably boosted throughput compared with traditional SATA-based external SSDs. According to the company's internal testing, the drive - capacity-dependent - can reach sequential read speeds of 1,600MB/s and sequential write speeds of up to 1,000MB/s. While impressive, these figures lag behind the promised 2,800MB/s sequential read and 2,300MB/s sequential write of Samsung's equivalent.

Where Patriot has an edge, though, is pricing: The company has confirmed US pricing for the drives at $299.99 for 512GB and $499.99 for 1TB, putting them $100 and $200 below Samsung's prices for equivalent capacities respectively. The Patriot drives only come with a two-year manufacturer's warranty, however, to the three years offered by Samsung.

The Patriot Evlvr family is available now in the US, with UK pricing and availability yet to be confirmed.